Collage, digital color print, 13 x 19 inches
Collage, digital color print, 13 x 19 inches
Collage, digital color print, 13 x 19 inches
Fantabulosas 28 January 2026 (Pierre Seel)
Pierre Seel
“I went to the police because I thought they were there to help. I told them someone stole my watch in the park. That was my mistake. I gave them my name, and they put it on a list. They didn’t see a victim of a theft; they saw a ‘175.’
At Schirmeck, the sun was too bright the day they killed Jo. We were lined up like fence posts. They brought him out—eighteen years old. He looked so small. When they put the bucket over his head, I wanted to run to him, but my legs were made of lead.
I stood there. I didn’t move. I didn’t blink. I watched the dogs take him apart. The sound… it didn’t sound like a person. It sounded like metal and teeth. I stayed silent because I wanted to live, but a part of me died in that dirt with him.
For forty years, I played a part. I wore a suit. I had a wife. I sat at dinner tables and listened to people talk about the war, and I said nothing. But every night, when I close my eyes, I’m back in that square. I hear the barking. I see the bucket. I am still that seventeen-year-old boy, waiting for a liberation that never really came.”
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial day on 27 January that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust.